Trinity Sackos’ life was in peril until he acquired the floating golf balls.

His boat could still sink.

But he figures it’s considerably safer to navigate the gravel quarry pond from a vessel than to brave its chilly depths with an air tank strapped to his back.

Especially since he learned to scuba dive from YouTube.

Sackos laughs at his own amateurish approach to turning this pond into a place where golfers can test their skills.

“I almost killed myself twice,” he said.

Sackos, 48, smiles almost constantly as he stands on the pond’s east shore and looks across the wind-rippled surface at the Elkhorns, their peaks dusted with new snow on the morning of Oct. 29.

He’s thinking of his grandpa, Alex Sackos, a lifelong Baker County resident who owned Sackos Excavating and property that includes this pond, which covers several acres.

Alex Sackos died on Jan. 30, 2021, at age 86.

Trinity, who moved to Baker City when he was a sophomore in high school and graduated from BHS in 1994, said his grandpa figured the pond, one of several east of Interstate 84 between exits 304 and 302, would make a fine golf driving range.

Trinity, who starred in football, basketball and baseball at BHS, when he went by Trinity Wheeler, moved from Baker City in 2000.

He has served in the Army National Guard for about 17 years. After working in excavation in Arizona, he moved to Boise a couple years ago and then returned to Baker City this summer. His grandma, Mary Lou Sackos, Alex’s widow, lives in Baker City.

Floating island

Soon after coming back to Baker, Trinity started thinking about his grandpa’s concept for attracting golfers to the pond that extends east from Best Frontage Road.

He concedes that he was hampered by a particular handicap.

“I know nothing about golf,” he said. “Zero.”

So Sackos talked to Colt Nudd, who has been an assistant golf coach at BHS for almost a decade.

Sackos decided that in addition to setting buoys in the pond with yardages, just as golfers would find at a conventional driving range, he would add something more enticing.

An island green.

Multiple golf courses feature greens surrounded by water. The most famous is the 17th hole at the Sawgrass course in Florida, site of the annual Players Championship for professional golfers.

The challenge is obvious — a wayward shot ends up not in tall grass or a sand trap but in the water.

Which if nothing else impedes with a player’s swing.

Sackos isn’t trying to make money.

He chose instead to start a fundraiser for local sports programs for kids.

Golfers can make a donation — Sackos usually asks $5 for 10 golf balls and $10 for 25 balls, but he doesn’t require payment — and the money accumulates.

The first golfer to make a hole-in-one gets half the money, and chooses which sports program gets the rest.

So far no one has landed a ball in the 55-gallon drum that serves as the hole to collect half the pot, which is at about $600.

Well, no one except Sackos himself.

He accomplished the feat once, but of course he’s not eligible for the jackpot.

Sackos said a regular golf hole, with a diameter of 4.25 inches, is just too small. Especially since the chances of a ball hitting the island and rolling into the hole is minuscule given that the island itself measures just 14 feet by 15 feet.

Sackos said the first island he built was “a complete failure.”

YouTube was involved, again.

The island flipped over while he was trying to place it in the pond.

So he built another island, and this time he hacked out a ramp in the pond’s steep banks.

Golfers get hooked on the challenge

The hole is flanked by a trio of flags.

Although the island is anchored, the connecting lines are long enough to allow the structure to drift on the vagaries of the wind.

The distance from the shore to the island ranges from about 105 yards to around 65 yards.

Sackos said golfers tend to become fixated on the challenge as soon as one ball hits the island.

Once they hear that hollow echo, he said, “it’s game on.”

“It’s addicting,” Sackos said with a smile.

He advertised the fundraiser on his Facebook page, and golfers, through word of mouth, started to show up.

Sackos initially planned to use regular golf balls — which are decidedly unbuoyant — and to use his newly acquired scuba skills to collect the balls.

He describes this idea with a single word.

“Horrible.”

He admits that he underestimated the potential hazards.

On one dive, when he was about 30 feet down and the gauge on his air tank showing about 10% left, Sackos got entangled in the thick grass that grows at the bottom of the pond.

He didn’t realize how powerful the grasp of the grass can be.

“It was terrifying,” he said.

Just before he extricated himself, Sackos watched a big fish — he thinks it was a catfish, although there are also large bass in the pond — wriggle effortlessly through the strands.

Another day Sackos learned something that was omitted from his online scuba lessons — air in the tanks, much like dairy products, has a shelf life.

He was diving when he started to feel nauseated.

Although he made it to the surface, Sackos said he struggled to move his limbs for some time afterward.

Those experiences convinced Sackos that he needed a different option.

Soon after he bought 4,000 floating golf balls.

No more diving.

More than golf

Sackos’ longer term concept for the property has many facets.

His ultimate goal is to create a place where local residents, and especially kids, can get exercise and have fun year-round.

Sackos said he has acquired batting cages and three pitching machines. He plans to install those in the metal shop at the southeast corner of the pond.

Sackos has already painted a pickleball court in the building.

“I just want a place where kids can come and play sports,” he said.

Recalling his high school years, Sackos said he knows that local residents support youth sports, and that places to play are limited, particularly during winter.

To that end, he designed the floating green with a rounded base so it will be lifted, rather than broken, when the pond freezes this winter.

He’d like to build small, heated enclosures so golfers can keep aiming for a hole-in-one year round.

Nudd, the BHS assistant golf coach, said the driving range at the pond could be a major benefit to Bulldog golfers.

Because the golf season starts in February, when Quail Ridge is usually snow-covered, in some years players can’t actually get onto the course until a month or so into the season, after the first tournament.

In the meantime, players have to practice indoors, hitting foam balls or regular balls into a net.

Although a computer tracker calculates the flight of balls hit into a net, Nudd said there is no substitute for practicing outdoors, where a golfer can follow the trajectory of each shot.

“As an opportunity for golfers to get early season full shots in, I can’t see us not going out there (to the pond),” Nudd said. “It’s a cool idea.”

Sackos said the pond is about 330 yards across.

Nudd said that after he talked with Sackos this summer, he brought Caden Long, a former Bulldog who is the longest hitter Nudd knows locally, often hitting drives 300 yards or longer, including the roll.

Nudd said Long didn’t quite hit any balls on the fly across the pond, so the spot should be well-suited as a driving range.

As for the batting cages and other ideas, Sackos acknowledges that he has much to do, including changing the zoning of the property, before he can open a public venue.

“It’s not going to happen overnight,” he said.

Sackos is excited about the property’s potential, though.

The views, for instance.

“It’s absolutely beautiful,” he said as he looked across the pond to the Elkhorns. “Gorgeous.”

Regardless of whether his bigger plans come to fruition, Sackos said he plans to continue the golf fundraiser.

“I have fun doing it,” he said.

Besides which, his grandma, Mary Lou, likes to watch visitors try to guide their ball into that tiny target bobbing in the breeze.

In the meantime, Sackos said people are welcome to visit the pond when the green metal gate off Best Frontage Road is open. He also accepts donations from people who want to use the pond as a driving range as well as try to win the hole-in-one jackpot.

His phone number is 208-861-0993.